


In Treatment - Lost

by DamsonDaForge



Series: In Treatment [4]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Being There, Canon Disabled Character, Disability, Empathy, Friendship, Gen, Loss, Shared History, Solidarity, Support, Tough Love, Trauma, venting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 03:22:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29744250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DamsonDaForge/pseuds/DamsonDaForge
Summary: When Deanna loses her empathic ability, who counsels the counselor?  Geordi tries to help when she feels she has nowhere left to turn.Missing scene from the episode "The Loss"
Relationships: Geordi La Forge & Deanna Troi
Series: In Treatment [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870396
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	In Treatment - Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Deals with perceptions of disability and trauma.

* * *

“You said what everyone else was thinking. At least you were honest.” Deanna was trying for airy and dismissive, yet she could hear but not prevent the anger and hurt from creeping into her words.

“I’m still sorry,” Geordi said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I’m an idiot sometimes.”

Before she could catch herself, Deanna found she was nodding. A tiny smile touched Geordi’s lips.

“You weren’t supposed to agree.”

Feeling brittle and cold, Deanna said, “I’m missing those cues lately.”

“I know,” he said softly. “I heard you resigned.”

“I have, yes.”

“If you think it’s for the best…”

“I do.” She continued putting PADDs and consultation notes away into a carry case, clearing an office which was officially no longer hers. “Was there anything else? You’re obviously very busy.”

“My detonate-a-photon-torpedo-in-their-path plan did nothing.” Geordi sighed. “I’m all out of ideas about what we can try with the engines. Data’s giving the Universal Translator another go but he’s not hopeful. We’re reconvening at 1600 hours, so I’ve got a little time.”

“For what?”

“For if you want to talk or yell or cry or throw something at my head.”

“Thank you for the offer, but I don’t want to throw anything at your head.”

“I can guarantee you one thing,” he said, looking right at her.

“What’s that?” she asked, unsettled by his directness, by his certainty. 

“Somebody’s told you it’ll all be okay because your other senses will compensate.” Geordi paused for a moment. “Like how a blind person is supposed to hear better?”

Deanna tried not to react, holding herself still.

“It was two people actually,” she said, stiffly. And she had used that exact comparison herself, when she had lost her temper with Will.

“There you go, then. As the only blind person on the ship, I thought I’d better get my ass over here, so I can start telling you how cool it is.”

“You’ve been blind since birth. It’s not the same thing.”

“No, it’s not. I can’t know exactly what it feels like for you right now, but I do know you’re scared and overwhelmed. You’re thinking, _‘ **I can’t do this**. **I can’t do this,** ” _and you can’t switch off the panic. You’re thinking your life’s never going to be the same and you’re frightened to death.”

Deanna was fighting back angry, invasive tears. _How did he know? How could he **possibly** know?_ Having this blank, empty shell that only looked like Geordi peering into her mind, practically reading her thoughts, was deeply disturbing.

And Geordi wasn’t giving up. “You don’t want to let anyone down and so your first instinct is to run. Mine was.”

She had no sense of where he was going with this or what point he was trying to make. She was so used to feeling their intent, to knowing the direction of travel, her ability had lit the way ahead with almost no effort on her part. Without it, she was adrift and grasping at shadows and Deanna didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit.

“ _What_ are you talking about?” she snapped, confusion and fear spilling out of her.

“Did I ever tell you about when I finally got my first VISOR?”

Whatever this was about, he wasn’t being put off, he was calm and strangely resolute. That was the only word that Deanna could use to describe his manner. Irritated and bemused by this random switch-back into Geordi’s past, Deanna stamped down on her swirling emotions and shook her head.

“You never did.”

She braced herself for yet another attempt by a friend at raising her spirits, bracing herself for an inspirational story she really, _really_ wasn’t in the mood for.

He nodded and sank down onto the couch, where he was silent for a few seconds.

Eventually, Geordi said, “It was really fucking hard.”

That shocked a little gasp from her. Deanna couldn’t recall him ever swearing in her presence and she had not anticipated he would share something with such blunt, brutal honesty. A rush of shame-fuelled heat flushed over her skin.

“I didn’t know that,” she said quietly.

“I’ve never really told anyone. How hard it was. I mean, they said there’d be a transition period and I guess they did their best to prepare me but my God.”

Deanna sat down in her chair, watching Geordi over on the couch and feeling nothing from him, but knowing he was digging into memories of what must have been a difficult time. 

“It was so fucking hard. It was just this… this confusion, this wall of colour, right up in front of my face. I didn’t know what any of it was. My brain didn’t know _how_ to see. I didn’t have a frame of reference. For anything. _This_ was what I’d waited my whole life for?”

“It was that bad?”

“I seriously thought it was some kind of sick joke to begin with. There was no way it was meant to be like this, no way, because it _sucked_.”

“If you ever felt like you needed to talk about this, you should have come to me.”

“I know.” Geordi looked at her. “I’d tried, with other people before, a few times. But they only want to know about the miraculous moment, you know? The moment the blind kid sees for the first time. Nobody wants to know the reality behind that because it’s messy and difficult and miserable and painful. So it gets locked in a box—”

Deanna’s eyes flicked to the half-filled case that lay open on the table.

“—shoved to the back of the closet and the door gets closed on it,” Geordi finished.

“I didn’t realise it had been that difficult.”

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Hands down. Sticking with my VISOR, catching up on school work, having to re-learn how to read and write—”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I could just about write my own name, but I could only read Braille,” Geordi clarified. “It took eighteen months, give or take, until I was what they officially called proficient and what I called not walking into door frames. And for long periods of that time I was miserable and frustrated and angry. I just couldn’t handle it.”

“You were only seven.”

“I don’t care if you’re seven or twenty-seven or a hundred and seven, massive change is going to massively mess with your head.”

“I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,” Deanna said, finding she was amused by his turn of phrase despite her situation and the topic of conversation.

“Hey, you’re the counselor, I’m just the guy with a wrench in his hand. I’m just saying, I get it. The urge to chuck it all in and bolt for the hills.”

Deanna looked at him, tried to look _into_ him. “You ran away?” she guessed.

Geordi nodded. “I got as far as the transit station at Jupiter, trying to get on a transport ship to Deneb IV.”

“Geordi! That’s ridiculous, why weren’t you stopped?”

“You’d be surprised how many unaccompanied kids there are flying around the quadrant. And how keen people were to help one who still needed a cane and a sensor net to get around. It wasn’t until I was missed at breakfast that the alert went out.”

“Your parents must have been frantic.”

“When I think back to how worried they were, I still feel a bit sick about it now,” he said, discomfort playing over his face. “My dad came and fetched me and he didn’t say a word. He didn’t say a single word the whole shuttle trip back. I’d never seen him so angry or afraid. It was like I’d broken something forever. It sounds weird, but that’s how it felt.”

“And when you got home?”

“Mom and Dad had a _conversation_ with me and I was grounded for three months.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah, it was like enduring an ice age. School, meals, chores, homework, bed. Oh and VISOR practice. That was it and damn, they stuck to it too. Didn’t matter how much I whined or cried or begged, they didn’t flinch. And I can throw a mean tantrum when I want to.”

Deanna smiled. “Tough love.”

“It was. They’d both taken a sabbatical and they’d take turns sitting with me every day. When I wasn’t at school, either Mom or Dad was with me. They would help me with my reading and writing, we’d do drawing and painting and there were exercises mapping what I could touch into what I could see. It was like…” He broke off, trying to find the right words. “It was like they’d closed in around me, but not to keep me in, it was to keep me safe. I’d been struggling and I didn’t know how to ask for help and I ended up doing something stupid. I get the need to run, I do, but right now you need to be around people who care about you.”

“So don’t run away to Deneb IV? Don’t run away from home?”

Geordi looked at her intently. “We have more than one place we call home though, don’t we?”

The truth in his statement hit Deanna square in the heart. Their childhoods had both been marked by frequent moves because of their parents’ work. Home had been their home planet, but it had also been a starbase and then a starship and then an outpost on a foreign world. 

“You think I should go home? To Betazed?”

“If it’s too difficult for you to be here, yeah. And if anyone can help with this, they’re going to be on Betazed, right?”

“Yes,” Deanna said quietly. “Yes they would.”

“You know something?” Geordi said, reflecting.

“No.” And she had absolutely no idea. None. It was awful, having to confront the void that was now speaking to her.

“I always really hated this vase.”

“What?” Deanna said, thrown again by Geordi’s sudden conversational swerve.

“I never liked it,” he said, wandering over to pick up the offending ornament. “It’s got pyrine and tanterite veins criss-crossing all over it. They have a horrible resonance with each other. It’s like a migraine waiting to happen.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” She couldn’t recall him feeling anything in particular about it, but given the nature of their appointments, an ugly vase wouldn’t have been at the forefront of his mind.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “I thought maybe your mother bought it you or something.”

“It was just out of the replicator. I can change it, if it bothers you.”

Geordi turned to her, grinning. “I’ve got something else in mind.”

He held out his free hand and, mystified, Deanna took it and allowed herself to be led out of her office.

“Computer,” Geordi said, “run SSU level one.”

The holodeck doors opened onto a vista of trees and grass that glimmered oddly under a violet-blue sky. Set into the grass were a dozen or more waist-high plinths. Atop each one stood vases, bowls, display screens, plaster statues and the like.

“Choose your weapon,” Geordi said, gesturing to the right.

Deanna looked around and saw, propped against a tree, various implements. There was a sledgehammer, a crossbow, a baseball bat and a crowbar.

She picked up the baseball bat and gave it a speculative swing. Geordi moved one of the sculptures off the nearest plinth and placed her vase in its place.

“Be my guest,” Geordi said, backing away.

“Don’t you want to do this one?”

“Nope, it’s your vase, you do the honours.”

“Okay,” she said, making another hesitant swing.

Stepping closer, Deanna raised the bat up behind her head, eyeing the ornament that had been aggravating Geordi for years. Channelling all of her grief and fear and loss, Deanna swung at it with all that she had.

She felt it connect, the jolt of it travelling into her body as the bat shattered the vase. The sound of it filled her ears, a kind of clanging boom far louder than she had expected. Shards exploded into a thousand flying pieces, the force of her swing twisting her body on the spot. There was something elemental in the satisfaction of its destruction and Deanna could feel a savage smile on her face and knew she was bearing her teeth.

“Next one?” she said, already making her way towards a large, cut-glass bowl.

“That’s what they’re here for,” Geordi said, folding his arms as he leant against the tree.

The glass exploded like a galaxy of diamonds, the strange light in the holodeck refracting back a billion brief rainbows before the pieces fell and were lost amongst the bright grass.

Deanna slammed and swung and shattered her way through the whole field of objects and as the last one was smacked into the air, she turned to Geordi, wild-eyed in expectation.

“I think you’re ready for a little… more,” he said cryptically. “Computer, level five.”

The field disappeared and was replaced by a huge junk yard. In amongst the piles of rusted metal and twisted wire was a wide pathway, littered with ancient satellites, tired old shuttles and busted escape pods.

Deanna looked at Geordi, looking for the weapons, but he just smiled and cocked his head, listening for something. Then she heard it, the sound of ancient engine approaching. As it got closer and louder, Deanna could see smoke belching from whatever it was that was heading their way.

Around a headland of scrap came the vehicle. A massive triple-tracked tank lumbered into view, a child’s chunky drawing brought to life. It was khaki green and covered in scrim net. Several exhausts were swept back along its length and they were spewing smoke like a snorting dragon. It bristled with weapons on articulated arms. There were phase cannons, rocket launchers and machine guns to choose from. The cab was open to the elements and Deanna could see a few basic levers were all that were required to drive it.

It came to a halt a few metres away and Geordi was grinning like a fool.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” he said, patting the side of the machine as if it were a prize racehorse.

“It’s…very big.”

Geordi laughed. “She is that. Climb aboard?”

There were handholds and footholds in the side of ‘her’ and Deanna clambered up the side, over the flattened area at the front and settled into the driving seat. Geordi secured himself into a harness, taking up a standing position behind her, weapons at hand.

“Forward and back,” Geordi said, pointing to the lever on the right. “And for left and right, it’s that one.”

“That simple?”

“Doesn’t need to be any more complicated.” He grinned at her. “This isn’t rocket science.”

Deanna was surprised that Geordi had this need for wanton destruction, but thinking for a moment, it did make a kind of sense. Spending his days having to be so precise and careful, fixing intricate, dangerous equipment and having to solve problems where failure could mean the lives of hundreds were in the balance, she could see how coming to the holodeck and simply smashing some scrap to pieces would be hugely therapeutic.

“This to start?” she asked. A big round button in front of her was begging to be pressed.

“Yep.”

Deanna pressed it.

The beast of a machine shuddered into life beneath her, the growl of its engine growing until she shoved the drive lever and the tank jolted forward.

“Easy, Counselor!” Geordi cried.

“Sorry!” Deanna more gently applied the forward gear and the tank moved smoothly.

“That’s it! Now head for that escape pod and _drive right over it.”_

She did as Geordi directed and the tank easily mounted the pod, jostling Deanna back in her seat as it climbed over the craft. It held for a moment, before the tank’s weight crushed it, crumpling it like a tin can.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Geordi yelled over the noise of the engine.

Deanna angled the two levers and headed for a busted-up shuttle. Metal screamed, consoles exploded and shorted cables spat the last of their current as the tank rumbled on and up and over, battering the spacecraft into the oil-soaked dirt.

“Fire in the hole!” Geordi bellowed and Deanna felt the _whoosh_ of a rocket fly mere centimetres above her head.

It smacked into a huge freighter about a hundred metres away and the whole thing exploded. A massive fireball flung debris in all directions and the blast-wave blew Deanna’s hair back. The noise and the heat were ridiculous. She drove on, forgetting everything in the moment. Deanna forded the expanding cloud of dust and any shrapnel that reached them fizzled out of existence.

She took a hard right and headed for the next derelict shuttle, leaving the smoking hulk of the freighter half-buried in a crater behind them.

An hour later, exhausted but exhilarated, Deanna emerged from the holodeck. She had been summoned by Captain Picard and had reluctantly agreed to meet with him.

“Thank you for this,” Deanna said, squeezing Geordi’s hand. “I don’t know what it’s done, but it’s done something.”

“I’m glad. Anytime,” he replied. “I mean it, not just crushing stuff, anytime you want to talk.”

Deanna gave him a hug and although she still felt lost and afraid and untethered, she no longer felt quite so alone.


End file.
